Anti-gunners know that if they’re ever going to be successful in criminalizing our right to keep and bear arms, they’re going to have to destroy the firearms industry. For decades they’ve launched legal attacks on gun makers and sellers that seek to hold them responsible for the actions of violent criminals and cowardly killers, while more recently we’ve seen moves aimed at muzzling their marketing and advertising, like the California and Illinois laws that impose huge fines on those found to be engaged in “unsafe and unlawful” marketing.

On today’s Bearing Arms Cam & Co I’m joined by Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, who take on the latest attacks by the gun control lobby and their intent to make the organization and the firearms industry Public Enemy #1. From Everytown’s new “Smoking Gun” website that claims to “expose” the gun industry’s “role in gun violence today” to a new podcast from The Trace entitled “Gun Machine“, the anti-gunners are operating a well-funded spin machine that’s meant to demonize both the industry and their customers. Here’s just a taste of The Trace’s podcast so you can see what I’m talking about.

Alain Stephens: Maybe you’ve heard that there’s a civil war coming.

Chip Roy: Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress. 

Alain Stephens: That with 111 gun deaths a day in America, the powers that be are gonna have to do something.

U.S. Representative Jim Jordan: They don’t like the Second Amendment. They wanna get rid of the Second Amendment.

Alain Stephens: You’ve heard that the government has always hated an armed populace, that it’s always been that way from Bunker Hill to Branch Davidians.

U.S. Representative Steve Scalise: All they want to do is take guns away from law-abiding citizens.

Tucker Carlson: They’re coming for your firearms.

Alain Stephens: Democrats say they’re held hostage by an all-powerful industry. Republicans say they’re holding an assault on liberty at bay.

Former U.S. Representative Madison Cawthorn: In real America, when we say come and take it, we damn well mean it.

Alain Stephens: But in my eight years of gun reporting? These dudes is trippin’.

By the way, I’m not sure where Alain Stephens gets off claiming that gun owners assert that the government has always hated an armed populace, when the vast majority of legal and historical scholarship from gun owners and Second Amendment advocates actually points to the opposite conclusion: the right to keep and bear arms has largely been unfettered throughout American history, albeit with notable exceptions in the South during the Jim Crow era, a handful of early 20th century laws aimed at restricting or prohibiting immigrants from keeping and bearing arms like New York’s Sullivan Act, and the creation of the modern gun control movement starting in the 1960s.

“It’s part of a pattern that we’ve seen,” Keane tells Bearing Arms.

“A couple of months ago they put out a fundraising piece on their website attacking NSSF and in particular going after me, so I’ve become the new bogeyman for Everytown, or at least part of their funding mechanism. I should demand 10% of all the money they raised,” Keane said with a smile.

Keane says he actually takes the focus on himself and the NSSF as a compliment of sorts, noting that if the organization wasn’t successful at defending the Second Amendment (and the commerce surrounding our right to keep and bear arms) it wouldn’t be subject to the “scandalous lies” of the anti-gunners. But it’s not just the private sector that’s taken an interest in eradicating the industry. Joe Biden campaigned for president by labeling the firearms industry as a scourge on the body politic, and Keane says that the attacks on the industry by the Biden administration are worse than he’s ever seen, even during the Clinton and Obama administrations.

“Look at the cozy relationship they [gun control groups] have with this White House; quite literally they have an office in the West Wing now staffed by an Everytown lobbyist. Can you imagine if, say, President Bush or President Trump opened up an office in the White House and hired an NRA lobbyist or an NSSF lobbyist to work there? The left, the media, they’d be going insane.”

Personally, I’m hoping that happens in early 2025. Heck, I’ll even throw my hat into the ring as a candidate to head up the ATF. Why not? After all, Joe Biden tried to install gun control activist David Chipman as head of the agency before he was rejected by a bipartisan group of senators.

Of course, in order to make dream come true we’re going to need to win in 2024, and Keane offered up a hint that the NSSF is going to go on offense in the next election cycle. While he didn’t offer any specifics, Keane teased an announcement from NSSF coming on Wednesday that he says will be one way for gun owners to show their support for the industry beyond visiting their local gun shop and voting with their wallets. We’ll have more news on that announcement tomorrow, but in the meantime check out the entire conversation with Keane in the video window below.